Why aren't destructible buildings common now?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The processing power of modern computers is incredible compared to 15 or even 10 years ago. Why can't you get into a fight inside a building, toss a fireball which also blows out the walls, and now you have to worry about the floors and roof above you collapsing down on you? Instead, it seems like environments are impervious to all manner of forces being thrown around.

[rusty_shackleford]

I remember when I was naive enough to think all the increased computing power would be used for cool things like physics.

Nope, it was used to run shovelware-tier UE5 jank games at 30FPS.

[J1M]

The answer used to be baked lighting.

Today I'd say the reason is probably because it's hard to make a corridor shooter if the player can destroy the corridor.

[Tangerine]

Modern devs are deathly afraid of the players doing something they didn't want them to do.

[asf]

rusty has been designing games

[NotAI]

Red Faction was a corridor shooter and that game was fine with destructible walls and buildings, wasn't it?

[rustys-name-is-kumar]

syndicate wars wins again

[Yankee Zulu]

Whats the point? If you destroy the world, there wont be a game for you to play in.

Destructible buildings are common in survival games. PVP ir PVE these buldings are needed to be created by the player first and then they can be destructed.

[Demonic Fate]

Single-player or persistent worlds can only allow you to destroy buildings that are inessential to the game. It's not the same as killing quest-essential NPCs, because that is a decision that you are aware of - maybe you don't know exactly why they're essential, but you know that someone is dead and it might have Consequences©. But if you're throwing fireballs around you can easily accidentally collapse a corridor, go "ohh cool", and have no way of knowing that the corridor was needed for a climactic endgame escape 20 hours later.

Multiplayer, round-based shooters are the ones that can do it. The Finals is mostly shiny slop, but they do this part well. The defending team can trap the "flag" to hell and back, and the counter to that is to blow up the floor and pick up the flag from the rubble. Give it a try.

[rusty_shackleford]

Today I'd say the reason is probably because it's hard to make a corridor shooter if the player can destroy the corridor.

Corridor shooters would probably be the easiest to make this for because you know it's a one and done deal, you aren't coming back to this specific scenario.

[TKVNC]

But if you're throwing fireballs around you can easily accidentally collapse a corridor, go "ohh cool", and have no way of knowing that the corridor was needed for a climactic endgame escape 20 hours later.

Should have accounted for that. Poor game design is all.

Red Faction: Guerrilla did it pretty well.

[traxtan]

The answer used to be baked lighting.

This is the definitive answer, doing (good) lighting in real time is still expensive even on modern hardware, you can fake it somewhat by switching out lighting bakes after a building is destroyed but that would require pre-recorded destruction (I forgot the exact name) like how Battlefield 4 does it's levolution, it's not actual destruction.
If anyone wants a destruction game check out Teardown, it uses Ray Tracing for its lighting and the game is wholly based on physics and destruction, also it's quite fun.

[Cipher]

Red Faction: Guerrilla did it pretty well.

I thought that was the future peeking on the horizon.

Little did I know that the future was ****** and **** and body types.

[Eyestabber]

Xcom 2 has a pretty good system for environment destruction that vastly improves upon the first game. I highly recommend playing it with the RPG mod.

[Lhynn]

Whats the point?

The point is that I want to take down that building along with everyone in it, ******. I dont give a **** if the world has one less building, imagine being that autistic.

[ThulsaDoomer]

Modern devs are deathly afraid of the players doing something they didn't want them to do.

I agree with the lighting issue, but this is an understated reason as well. A lot of modern devs absolutely hate giving players the ability to warp their vision. That, and many of them are incompetent and cannot achieve what guys like John Carmack did no matter how much TRT is injected into their blood stream.

[Yankee Zulu]

Whats the point?

The point is that I want to take down that building along with everyone in it, ******. I dont give a **** if the world has one less building, imagine being that autistic.

And why would you want to do that kid? To roleplay as an edgy 12 yo who is ****** at everyone because his parents abused him?

[Lich]

Whats the point?

The point is that I want to take down that building along with everyone in it, ******. I dont give a **** if the world has one less building, imagine being that autistic.

And why would you want to do that kid? To roleplay as an edgy 12 yo who is ****** at everyone because his parents abused him?

You're being unusually defensive. Are you reminded of tofu dregs back home?

[Yankee Zulu]

The point is that I want to take down that building along with everyone in it, ******. I dont give a **** if the world has one less building, imagine being that autistic.

And why would you want to do that kid? To roleplay as an edgy 12 yo who is ****** at everyone because his parents abused him?

You're being unusually defensive. Are you reminded of tofu dregs back home?

That turns you on? **** off ******.

[1998]

Modern devs are deathly afraid of the players doing something they didn't want them to do.

This. And barely anyone seems to be asking for it. Just makes no sense from a dev perspective.

[NotAI]

Now that I think about, strictly speaking, there is...Minecraft...and it's pretty popular... (Runs for cover...)

[DemoGraph]

Why can't you get into a fight inside a building

X-COM (the real one) has destructible almost everything. It's pretty great.
Also, Silent Storm.
They have characters with stats, so those are RPGs.

Seriously, I think it's because
- making an engine for destructible things is labour-intensive, vanilla UE and fucken Unity don't support them by default and everyone is Bobby Kotick,
- it leads to more dangerous gameplay (rocks fall, everyone dies), that doesn't sell that well and would lead to an endless balance whining,
- mages would outperform melee classes even more; soyaks need their lithe elven driver, ******* need their sword'n'board to feel included,
- it deviates from the established vanilla RPG scheme (BG, WoW, etc.),
- presumably it means that the world would have to be reactive enough to rebuild the destroyed things. Which modern RPG has economic system decent enough to support it?
- players would whine about losing their homes and having to get into mortgage again.

[Eyestabber]

Jagged alliance 3 and xenonauts 2 both feature destructible environments.

[Lhynn]

Whats the point?

The point is that I want to take down that building along with everyone in it, ******. I dont give a **** if the world has one less building, imagine being that autistic.

And why would you want to do that kid? To roleplay as an edgy 12 yo who is ****** at everyone because his parents abused him?

Shut the **** up ******, your argument was defeated, your dignity is in shambles, and now you are posting cringe, just shut the **** up.

[WaterMage]

Diversity hires are too incompetent to implement good physics or just import from other project.

[Capybara]

Except autists like the Dwarf Fortress guys, companies don't care about exploring the possibilities of the medium anymore, why would they? They can just play it safe... no, they have to play it safe because of the astronomical costs of game development. On the other hand, indie devs are mostly busy doing nostalgia bait games.

[Capybara]

I almost forgot... 25 years ago, companies were mostly working as just financers of projects and directors could go wild, that's not the case anymore. You're forced to put battle passes and DEI **** to maximize profit even in detriment of the whole project.

[Norfleet]

X-COM (the real one) has destructible almost everything. It's pretty great.

Well, sorta. You can shoot out each individual wall and floor panel, but the building doesn't actually collapse if you destroy the lower floor, instead hovering in air.

Also, Silent Storm.

Yeah, you could destroy the **** out of things in Silent Storm.

- mages would outperform melee classes even more; soyaks need their lithe elven driver, ******* need their sword'n'board to feel included

Well, there weren't really mages in Silent Storm, and in X-Com, the "mages" are the ones who DON'T destroy buildings. There aren't really any acts of physical destruction performed with psionics. If you want to destroy something with psionics, you have to mind-control something that has the equipment to do so. Otherwise, it falls to the heavy weapons guy. Unless your mage also happens to be carrying the blaster bomb launcher, which is not uncommon. Just watch where you aim that thing.

[Magick]

Cause you wouldn't be able to see the yellow paint, and then journos wouldn't know where to go.